AM2+ Denebs: Doomed To Die

I always wanted to write one of those ridiculously dire headlines you see so often these days, but seriously, AM2+ Denebs won’t be around very long.

You can see a roadmap showing Denebs; their speeds, and when they should show up here.

What’s probably the most practical piece of information in the article, though, is none of the abovementioned, but that AMD isn’t going to make these DDR2 Denebs for very long, just a few quarters. Hence, they aren’t going to make very many of them. Hence, they’re going to be relatively expensive. It some ways, these chips resemble the initial socket 754 Hammers.

Perhaps the biggest puzzle is why these chips exist at all. If AM3 chips are supposed to run on AM2+ motherboards, why make AM2+ only chips? Perhaps the reason for that is that AM3 chips were supposed to have both a DDR2 and DDR3 memory controller. Maybe AMD has changed its mind about that, maybe they can’t afford to spare the die space. If you say, “Well, AMD will save die space by not including a DDR3 controller in the initial Denebs,” well, sure, but they’ll save a lot more die space in total by dropping a DDR2 controller from what will be many, many more AM3 Denebs.

I think we’re going to find out that AMD has dropped the dual-memory controller idea from AM3, and these AM2+ chips are AMD’s way of making it up to current AMD users. The only other real possibility is that AMD is really having problems with the DDR3 controller and is getting what they’re sure will work out the door. They might both be correct.